Bethabara Historic Park Internship

Summer is flying by, and I am struggling to get my hours up before school starts, or they will have to be dramatically cut back. Finding a work-life balance has been hard this summer because while I want to find time for myself, I also want to be present and learn as much as possible from this internship. Hopefully I will still be able to work some school tours once classes start again; I am just anxious about finding balance in my life at the moment. Other than internal struggle, Bethabara has been very busy lately! On the 22nd, there was another group of summer camps who came through, and I was able to run a station by myself! I ran the tricorne hat station, and I had lots of fun interacting with the children as well as providing something educational for them. Children have a lot of interest in history, I learned, and it is very important to find out how to keep them engaged in history in fun ways, which is why I enjoy the summer tours so much! I also took the weekend of the 23rd through the 26th to visit the beach with my friends. I struggle with the guilt of taking off work to have time for myself, but I truly think it was worth it, and it is a good lesson in finding work-life balance and not being overly anxious over what people will think of me for taking time to myself. Something all people could learn from is that while work can be a passion and there is always pressure to work more and more, it is important to find time to do things for yourself so you don’t get burnt out. While studying history in school, I find myself getting burnt out of learning about history, but when I have a break over the summer, I find myself rekindling my love for history and reading history books I have bought but felt too overwhelmed to read. All of that to say that work-life balance is essential, even in jobs that relate to your passions. 

It is coming up on time for me to find a trade that interests me so I can devote more time to demos and whatnot. I think I am mostly interested in blacksmithing. While it is challenging, it is very fun and satisfying to find ways to mold metal. I think blacksmithing would be a cool addition to my resume as well. If I choose to find a career in interpretation, I am sure many sites need a practicing blacksmith. I am also interested in colonial cooking, but there have not yet been any demos in that, mostly because of the heat. I have assisted in blacksmith demos twice now, and I can tell that the more you do it, the easier it gets. I made a second s-hook, and it turned out remarkably better than the first! I hope I can assist in more demos in the future. 

I did not work as many hours the past two weeks due to both vacation and scheduling conflicts. I really only worked in the visitor center 3 times and assisted in the one summer tour. I again hope that I can get some more hours before school starts back in August. On the 20th, there was a really awesome opportunity to learn from one of the more experienced guides, Conan. Conan took many of the tour guides on his version of the timeline tour and let us ask questions. He has a very smooth tour with good transitions. I also learned a lot about Cherokee relations, something Conan has done a lot of research on about Bethabara.